"Bamberg County and its county seat, Bamberg, were named for local resident William Seaborn Bamberg (1820-1858) and other members of the Bamberg family...Although the area has been primarily agricultural, several towns developed along the route of the South Carolina Railroad in the mid-nineteenth century. In February 1865 Confederate soldiers fought an unsuccessful skirmish against General Sherman's troops at Rivers Bridge, now the site of a state park. The plantation of author William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870) was in what is now Bamberg County, and artist Jim Harrison is also a native of the county."